sBTC is exciting... but how can we ensure it really takes off?

_{Today’s post was inspired by the Blockchain Ecosystem Growth Loop by James Ross.}

Flywheels are powerful tools for startups to drive user acquisition. The idea is that no single action will suffice on its own. It takes sustained momentum across a number of vectors. Each phase is necessary to create a positive feedback loop and achieve the desired growth effect.

This is core to the strategy for sBTC go-to-market. The phases are detailed below:

Developers

This phase is focused on the developer lifecycle. At the moment, the priority is building the core protocol. As work on the protocol advances, the focus shifts toward developers that will build apps on the network to unlock productive use cases for Bitcoin. This will be done by identifying bounties and issuing grants for critical tooling, infrastructure and applications. There is also a focus on documentation to increase knowledge of how to integrate sBTC while taking advantage of the protocol’s unique properties.

👉 Activities include: • core protocol development • documentation and • critical bounties.

Apps

This phase is focused on adoption. There is an emphasis on recruiting high quality founders to the ecosystem to build applications. Our goal is to be the number one protocol for Bitcoin DeFi. We recruit founders by highlighting the addressable market opportunity. These applications are necessary to onboard users to the network.

👉 Activities include: • hosting hackathons, • recruiting high-quality founders, and • getting early feedback from developers.

Users

This phase is focused on demand. Our goal for this phase is to provide a first-class user experience. Users are the lifeblood of the ecosystem. Once sBTC apps are live, we will focus on a targeted user acquisition campaign that highlights opportunities for productive Bitcoin.

👉 Activities include: • forming strategic partnerships to increase accessibility and liquidity of sBTC • marketing to our target audience.

Note that these phases are not sequential. They all flow into one another and are necessary for building momentum over time.

The ₿ottom Line

The go-to-market working group is focused on growth strategies to ensure the sBTC system is scalable and that we provide an exceptional user experience for Bitcoiners. This is a reliable framework that has historically worked well. Over the coming weeks, we’ll share more details on our roadmap and implementation details for this strategy.

On to the top highlights from this week…

💻 Engineering Updates

• fjs

  • Merged: generating StacksTransactions using Stacks.js (Link)

  • Merged: FROST PDF publishing (Link)

  • WiP: Clarity and Clarity parameters serialization

• donpdonp

  • Progress: Peg-In integration test (Link)

• Jacinta

  • Merged CI pipeline clippy pull requests (Link, Link)

  • WiP: Add signer cli tool to create signer private key (Link)

• stjepan

  • Merged: Resolve cargo errors in benchmarks (Link)

  • WIP: Integrating stacks-coordinator and stacks-node (Link)

• Ӿoloki

  • Working on integration between FROST and Bitcoin Taproot transactions. (Link)

• mijoco

  • Deployed sBTC contract to testnet (Link)

  • Minted testnet sBTC (Link)

  • Migrated from scure-btc-signer to bitcoinjs

⚒️ Go-To-Market Updates

• Shared roadmap update with GTM working group.

• Presented competitive user research study.

• Drafted sBTC Comms & Marketing plan.

• Received initial designs for sBTC brand assets.

• Met with partners on potential opportunities and received feedback.

• Conducted research on potential incentives for strategic partners.

🌍 Around the Ecosystem

• North Rock Digital - Stacks Thesis (Link)

• Bitcoin-Backed DeFi: An Introduction by Tycho Onnasch and Claire Topalian (Link)

• Discussion on sBTC + Ordinals product validation (Link)

• “Ordinals have catalyzed a cultural shift in Bitcoin that will work to STX's benefit” — Chris Burniske on Stacks and sBTC (Link)

Signing Off,

Andre